Tuesday, 11 June 2013

When it comes to chocolate, I choose Cadbury over Godiva. I choose Mars over Hotel Chocolat. I choose Nestlé over fancy-schmancy Chöcôlatéei de Poshé (est. 89 BC). For me, a fat chocolate bar under a pounder brings me way more happiness than a skimpy box of chocolates with strange or boring flavours.

When I have a sweet craving, I want a Kit Kat Chunky to munch on, and not little bite-sized, heart-shaped truffles with a ruddy lemongrass filling. (I still have that horrid gustatory memory etched in my head. "Unpleasant" doesn't even cover a quarter of it.)

A shelf of chocolate bars is bound to be available just round the corner if you are anywhere near ample civilisation here in London. You will always find the usual: Mars bars, Aero, slabs of Cadbury Dairy Milk, slabs of Galaxy, Wispa bars, Bounty, and of course, Kit Kat Chunky bars.

Kit Kat Chunky Coconut was one of the four flavours participating in the Kit Kat Chunky Champion Campaign 2013 (Might as well call it the Kit Kat Khunky Khampion Kampaign) which ran from mid-January to mid-March, during which four new Kit Kat flavours were available in supermarkets, and consumers could vote for their favourite flavour online. The most popular flavour would then continue to be sold while the rest would just disappear slowly from our lives.

The coconut flavour came simply from the addition of a taste and fragrance. However, the bar is still no Bounty equivalent yet – much of it is still like any old regular Kit Kat Chunky. Coconut fans would relish, but I wouldn't go out of my way to get one of these, nor would I choose it over a normal Kit Kat Chunky.

Hazelnut and I have a connection. When I was a kid eating Nutella on toast almost every morning, I assumed that Nutella was simply the best-tasting chocolate product ever for a magical, unexplainable reason. I don't know why it took me such a long time to find out that the addition of hazelnut is accountable for bringing a nutty extra to the taste of chocolate in a Nutella jar, but when I did, I worshipped this combination – Ferrero Rocher made so much sense at last, and Hanuta was expectedly divine when I first tried it.

Naturally, the Kit Kat Chunky Hazelnut is my favourite of the lot. There's a creamy layer of hazelnut cream above the wafer layers, and it is all coated in chocolate – nothing can go wrong here.

I didn't bother with the other two flavours, but mint won, while choc fudge retreated into the corner with a crestfallen face that said: 'chocolate within chocolate... I thought I was special...' Like everybody else who was strongly rooting for a flavour other than the mint contender, I started a riot in my bedroom when I found out about the results online. I never eat anything mint, because it reminds me too much of toothpaste. Choc fudge just didn't make any sense to me at all. ('But... I swear I'm special...')

It might be way too late for any of this, but a last word must be put out there for the sake of justice: Kit Kat Chunky Hazelnut is the true winner. And you all know it. Deep inside.

I got Green Tea Kit Kats as a gift from my housemate when returned from Japan, her homeland. The bars are considerably smaller than Kit Kats sold elsewhere.

The bar is completely green, with specks of green tea powder. Nothing chocolate-related in sight so far.

My first reaction when biting into it was thinking: 'this simply tastes like white chocolate...' However, a very mild green tea taste rests on your mouth after a while, which is good, as it can go very wrong when it comes to tea, which can tread into the bitter zone. The chocolate also has a slightly grainy texture due to the green tea powder.

I wouldn't hesitate buying this flavour regularly if it were sold in the UK. White chocolate can tend to be too sweet and sickly sometimes, but the thinness of green tea helps to counter that – a really good combination choice. Arigato, Japan.

I was so psyched after hearing that they sold a cookies & cream flavour of Kit Kat. Cookies & Cream remains my favourite, staple ice cream flavour to date.

I don't really care if each twin bar is 107 calories, I just want to eat chocolate, which is undeniably unhealthy and fattening anyway!

In retrospect, this is a very poor interpretation of the blessed cookies & cream flavour. Eating it was a pleasure, with a combination of white and milk chocolate used in the coating of the regular wafer biscuits – the best of both worlds. But they could have either put in a little bit more effort and actually include cookies or cream in it, or rename the product.

Kit Kat is the first that comes to mind when I think of a chocolate bar. The variety of flavours caters to a wide range of tastebuds too! (not mentioned here are orange, peanut butter and dark chocolate)